2024 general elections will be chaotic if EC chair refuses to learn – NDC warns

The National Democratic Congress (NDC) has intimated that the 2024 Presidential and Parliamentary Elections could be fraught with chaos if the Electoral Commission of Ghana (EC) led by its Chairperson Jean Mensa fails to build consensus with all stakeholders and learn from precedents.

Deputy General Secretary of the NDC, Mustapha Gbande, speaking on the challenges during this year’s district-level elections in an interview with Citi FM, noted that the level of lapses, delays and technical hitches experienced in the conduct of the elections show that the Chairperson of the EC is clearly incompetent and unprepared to learn.

“We[the NDC] followed keenly as far as the district assembly elections are concerned. The situation that we find ourselves in as a nation is largely because we have an electoral commissioner who does not believe in consensus-building, and does not want to learn. We would have avoided this situation if she had engaged stakeholders and had been willing to do what was right…What is more shocking is that six hours before the election, the commissioner did not envisage that inventory might not have reached the centres. And she did not even check to ensure that they were in order.

This clearly tells us that we are dealing with Jean Mensa, who is largely incompetent and has demonstrated low experience in terms of elections management. It is dangerous going into 2024, particularly if the same personality is still going to be our electoral commissioner,” Mr Gbande argued.

The district-level elections held yesterday December 19, 2023, to elect assembly members and unit committee members for all district, municipal and metropolitan assemblies, experienced some challenges such as malfunctioning Biometric Verification Devices (BVDs); delays in the distribution of voting materials to some parts; and detection of errors on some ballot papers leading to postponements of voting.

The Coalition of Domestic Election Observers (CODEO), which has described the challenges as unfortunate, blamed the Electoral Commission for not being proactive in the discharge of its duties.

But the EC has defended itself, explaining that such challenges are inevitable given the nature of district-level elections.

CODEO blamed the Electoral Commission (EC) for not living up to its task and urged it to do better.

Reports of non-functioning of the Biometric Verification Device (BVD) used for verification and delays in the distribution of voting items to some centres hampered the process in some areas.

Also, voting in some centres was postponed due to errors detected on the ballot papers.